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Friday, August 14, 2009

Enjoying the break

I am still for the most part staying off my bike. I got out for a 30-mile ride the other day and felt Achilles pain toward the end. To tell you the truth, the pain's not even that bad. But my heel doesn't seem to hurt at all when I walk, and right now, I'm really enjoying the walking. For this super-short window of time between when the snow melts and falls again, so much new terrain opens up that it seems almost a shame to hold yourself to bikeable trails. In Juneau, if you really want to get out, you have to go where your bike can't.

Yesterday, my friend Abby and I headed up to the Douglas Island Ridge via the Dan Moller trail. Dan Moller is one of my favorite winter bike trails, well-used and often even groomed by snowmobiles. It's not so much a trail in the summer as it is a wooden staircase followed by spongy tundra.

Abby is a super-fast runner who can only drag herself down to my speed by schlepping around her 1-year-old son, Elias.

Even as the bushwhacking dragged on, Elias just slept or mumbled something or pointed to trees and rocks. I've never seen such a well-behaved baby. We hiked for three hours; he ate half a cracker, never fussed, and giggled when Abby said things like "look at all the pretty flowers." I told Abby, "You're in trouble. You've got an adventure kid on your hands."

Last night, I had a crazy dream where I was climbing the Mendenhall Glacier with ice axes and crampons as the glacier melted beneath me. As the ice sank I just kept climbing, frantically chipping at the wet ice as roaring streams of meltwater gushed down crevasses. It was one of those dreams that frustratingly had no resolution, so it lingered in my mind long after I woke up. So without ever really making a conscious decision to go there, I found myself out at the West Glacier Trail this morning, scouting the route to Mount McGinnis.

I walked for an hour and a half without breaking treeline. That is certainly a long, meandering trail, and hard to follow. On the way back, I lost the faint, rocky path and ended up on the ledge of a cliff the glacier had carved out millennia ago. Now the glacier is a shadow of what it once was, and noticeably shrinking every year. I'm still trying to figure out what that dream meant. Perhaps it doesn't have to mean anything.

14 comments:

I don't know about dream's meanings, but it seems you have found out how to make you dreams come true...acting them out. That is great. Who else actually does that and what do we miss otherwise? Your pictures leave me breathless...the scenery (minus the baby) is wonderfully dreamy.

Also, curious how much you rely on GPS/maps, do you just go explore or do you worry about getting to work on time? Not that being late matters unless your boss reads your blog and knows where you really were! :-)

having climbed the mendenhall icefall from the lake to where it levels off, i advise against going anywhere near that thing. there is a dead swiss guy in one of the crevasses that no one has ever found. huge blocks released beneath us just after we passed them, etc.

Since dreams are a way of communicating with the unconscious, Jung believed that dream images reveal something about yourself, your relationships with others, and situations in your waking life. Dreams guide your personal growth and help in achieving your full potential. Jung also believes that the dream's manifest content is just as significant and revealing as the latent content. By simply discussing what is currently going on in your life, it can help you interpret and unlock the cryptic images of your dreams. Jung's method of dream interpretation is placed more confidently on the dreamer. He believes that you all possess the necessary tools to interpret your own dreams. There is no one correct way to interpret a dream. The meaning of your dreams is a personal judgment and is up to you on how to interpret them. Whatever interpretation feels right to you is most significant and more important than what someone else thinks or believes.

Man, it's almost 100 degrees every day down here in Texas. Looking at your photos of is like looking into heaven. All the green and lush plant life... I'm so there! I'm sure you be back on your bike soon enough.cheers

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